


Some Bards Have All The Luck

by fabrega



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22039777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: 5 times Geralt saves Jaskier, and one time Jaskier saves Geralt.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 191
Kudos: 5175





	Some Bards Have All The Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the nebulous amount of time between episodes 4 & 6\. No actual spoilers, I don't think?
> 
> Thanks a million to cai & smarsh for the beta. ♥

i.

"I leave you alone for _one minute_ ," Geralt grumbles, looking up at Jaskier. He's hanging upside down from a tree, ten feet in the air, the rope loop of some kind of trap tight around one ankle.

"You were gone for way more than a minute," Jaskier says, crossing his arms. The force of the movement starts him swinging again, which is terrible. He'd only just managed to stop swinging, and his stomach still hasn't recovered. "You said you'd be back by mid-morning, and I don't know if you'd noticed, but it is currently late afternoon."

"I told you to stay in the camp." Geralt walks around on the forest floor below him. The scent of monster guts wafts up to Jaskier, and he coughs a little.

"And, again, you also told me you'd be back by mid-morning. How long could it possibly take to kill an endrega?"

Geralt sets his jaw. Hmm. Jaskier's seen that look a lot, but never from above before.

"The contract specified an endrega queen, and I had to find it first. What exactly did you think you were doing, tromping into the woods after me? If I hadn't been able to handle it on my own, surely you didn't think you could help?"

"Music soothes the savage beast," Jaskier says, a little snippily. The swinging motion has turned into a slow rotation, taking Geralt out of his field of view.

"It absolutely does not."

"Or," Jaskier tries again, "Perhaps my singing would lift your spirits, give you the boost you needed to finish the fight."

"...You didn't think that far ahead."

"Okay, fine, I didn't think that far ahead." Jaskier sighs. He hears Geralt chuckling from somewhere behind him. "Now that we've all had a laugh about it, can you please cut me down?"

The rope goes suddenly, unexpectedly. Jaskier manages not to land on his head or his neck (or his lute) but only just. The wind is definitely knocked out of him, and he lies on the forest floor for a moment or two, eyes closed, trying to recover without _looking_ like he's trying to recover. Geralt's already going to give him enough shit as it is.

When he opens his eyes, Geralt is standing above him. "You were right about one thing."

"Oh? What's that?" Jaskier manages to wheeze.

"My spirits _are_ lifted."

  
  


ii.

When Jaskier returns from the privy, there is a woman at the table with Geralt. This isn't _too_ surprising. Women are often intrigued by his rakish good looks and his stand-offish demeanor, which they mistake for playing hard to get. But this one is different: she's dressed much more nicely than the rest of the clientele of this run-down little tavern on the edge of town, and she looks up when Jaskier approaches the table.

" _You_ ," she says, looking straight at him. There's anger in her eyes and venom in her voice.

Jaskier stops, surprised. He doesn't recognize the woman, and besides, there's no way she'd be _this_ angry if they'd slept together.

"Jaskier," Geralt says, his voice deliberately calm, "The mayor's wife has been making some surprising accusations."

Oh, shit, right. He recognizes the insignia stitched onto her handkerchief now. The mayor.

He should've guessed.

"Surely they're not _that_ surprising?" Jaskier says under his breath, just loud enough for Geralt to hear, as he slides into the seat next to Geralt.

Geralt gives him a stern look, matching the one the mayor's wife is giving him. That's...fair.

"I told the esteemed lady that she must be mistaken."

"The witcher vouches for you, bard," the mayor's wife says, giving both of them an incredibly suspicious look. "But I've got my eye on you, and no mistake. You'd be wise to stay in town no longer than your business keeps you here."

With that, she gets up and leaves the tavern. Geralt waits until the door closes behind her to turn to Jaskier. "You _slept_ with the fucking _mayor_?"

It feels like there are a couple of different questions in there. Instead of directly answering any of them, Jaskier says, forced brightness in his voice, "Come on, Geralt, life is too short to deny ourselves its pleasures."

"You slept with the mayor." Geralt sighs and shakes his head.

"You _vouched_ for me," Jaskier counters.

"Trust me, I'm regretting it already."

Jaskier risks a look over at his friend. Geralt doesn't look annoyed. He looks like he's trying not to smile.

  
  


iii.

Jaskier's been in town for a month now, regular public performances at the town's inn and occasional private performances in the town's bedchambers. Geralt had rolled in three days ago, answering a posting from the town alderman to help clear out the wyverns in the hills above town. Geralt had returned to town--not triumphantly, Geralt very rarely does anything in a way that can be considered _triumphant_ \--with a sack full of wyvern parts and, after he'd dumped the sack directly onto the alderman's desk, had joined Jaskier in the tavern.

"I'm glad our paths have crossed again! How long are you staying?" Jaskier asks, sipping an ale while Geralt digs into a big, steaming plate of what Jaskier hopes is not wyvern guts.

"I'll be moving on tomorrow," Geralt says, through a mouthful of his meal.

Jaskier feels his stomach sink. He's going to ask if Geralt could maybe stick around for another day or so, spend some time with his friend, when a pretty young waitress carrying a plate shows up at their table.

"For you," she says, setting the plate down in front of Jaskier. The meal on it, venison and potatoes with a huge dollop of butter on top, looks and smells _delicious_.

Geralt looks her over, cautiously, doubtfully. "Who's it from?"

"Oh, probably a fan," Jaskier says, waving off the young woman and Geralt's concern with the same dismissive movement.

"You have fans?"

"Ha ha. I've been doing well for myself, I'll have you know." He moves to take a bite, but Geralt reaches across the table and stays his hand. "C'mon, Geralt, why are you so worried?"

"Because I know you, and I know the kind of trouble you can get into."

"Sounds like friendship to me," Jaskier mutters, but rather than argue with Geralt about it, he digs in to the free meal that fate has seen fit to give him.

That, it turns out, is a mistake. It doesn't take long for the melting-insides feeling to start.

Geralt watches him for a second before rolling his eyes and getting up from the table. Nice, Jaskier thinks, real nice of him to abandon a friend in his time of need--but then he returns with the waitress in tow.

"What did you do?!" he hisses at her.

"Nothing! The cook gave me a bottle and I put it on the food, that's all."

"Poison." Geralt does not look surprised, and he lets go of the waitress and heads off in the direction of the inn's kitchen.

Jaskier wishes he could see what's happening, but all he can concentrate on is how much pain he's currently in. The part of him that writes poetry for a living wants to come up with words for how much agony he's in, but the part of him that is in the agony is refusing to let his brain work. He curls in on himself, sweating and groaning, and tries very hard not to fall off the bench onto the floor. He'd seen what was on the floor when he'd come in.

He hears the sounds of a scuffle from the direction of the kitchen, and then Geralt returns to the table once more.

"Which of you arseholes is Valdo Marx?" he shouts to the room at large.

Jaskier is still doubled over at the table, so he doesn't actually get to witness what happens next, the confrontation between Geralt and the man who'd poisoned Jaskier. The next thing he knows, Geralt is back at the table, thrusting a small bottle into Jaskier's hand.

"More poison?" Jaskier grits out.

"The antidote," Geralt says. He pulls the cork from the tiny bottle and helps Jaskier raise it to his lips.

The melting feeling subsides fairly quickly, thank goodness. Jaskier thanks Geralt profusely, whose expression is somewhere between relief and annoyance.

"I told you not to eat it."

"That you did! Ah, Geralt, what would I do without you?"

Geralt laughs, but the worry lines don't leave his face.

  
  


iv.

There's a flash of steel in the dark water, and the tentacles that had been pulling Jaskier deeper suddenly let go. A strong hand grips the back of Jaskier's tunic and pulls him up out of the water, flailing and gasping. He gets hauled back to shore, and the same strong hand pounds on his back until he coughs up most of the lake water from his lungs.

He flops backwards onto the muddy shore and takes deep, painful breaths.

"What the fuck were you doing?" Geralt asks angrily. "You would've drowned!"

Between gasping breaths, Jaskier manages to tell him.

"A woman," Geralt repeats dubiously.

"Right, because _that's_ the part you have a problem believing."

"A woman, in the lake, with a sword." Geralt takes a seat on a nearby rock, up out of the mud. Jaskier wishes he'd thought of that.

"A magic woman. Some kind of nymph, supposedly. The villagers spoke very highly of her." Jaskier shrugs. "So I paid a man to borrow his boat and rowed out to see if I could find her."

Geralt makes a thoughtful noise. "Seems to me like you probably bought his boat."

Jaskier is confused, until Geralt gestures out at the lake. He spots what remains of the boat: a few cracked boards bobbing in the murky water. He swears.

"Well, anyway, I didn't realize nymphs had tentacles."

Geralt chuckles. "They don't."

"This one did! Look what it did to my boat! Look what it did to me!" He raises his arm to show Geralt the angry red sucker-marks on the skin of his forearm. He realizes that might not be all of it; when he pulls apart the ripped cloth on the front of his tunic, there's a series of sucker-marks on his torso as well.

Geralt makes a face. "Nymphs don't have tentacles. This wasn't a nymph."

"Well then, whose tentacle-y clutches did you just hack me out of?"

"Just your standard-issue lake monster. You're in the wrong lake."

Jaskier squints at him. "How could you possibly--oh. Oh, of course. You've already met her."

"Been there, done that, got the sword." Geralt looks a little smug, and also like he's trying not to look a little smug. "Why did you even want the sword? You don't carry a sword."

"True, my weapon is my cutting wit," Jaskier says, which gets a smile out of Geralt. "But I have this friend who's quite partial to swords, and I thought it...might make a nice gift for him."

Is Geralt blushing? Can witchers blush? Is that even possible?

"Hopefully the thought counts for something," Jaskier says quietly.

"I don't know your friend," Geralt says, his voice gruff, "but I'm sure it does."

  
  


v.

Jaskier is glad to see Geralt, when he finally shows up. But that doesn't stop Jaskier from shouting at him. "This time I did _exactly_ what you said! I stayed at the camp! And look where it got me!"

Geralt glares at him. "I told you to stay in town!"

"Oh, come on! We compromised!"

"We propose a trade, witcher," says the terrifying bird-monster who's currently holding Jaskier, interrupting their arguing. It's not a monster he recognizes--maybe it's the thing Geralt is here in the hills to hunt. Either way, its talons are digging into his sides very sharply. He winces.

"What kind of a trade?" Geralt asks. He sounds understandably wary.

"Your dear one for my dear one," the bird-thing says.

Geralt laughs out loud, which, okay, feels a little hurtful. "He's not my _dear one_."

"Lover, then," the bird-thing amends. "I do not know or care what the human terminology is. Yours for mine."

"He really isn't--"

"Geralt," Jaskier hisses as the bird-thing shifts its grip, "I'm--ow--I'm not sure now is the time to be arguing semantics."

Geralt, to his credit, shuts up and makes the trade. He opens his satchel and gently removes an egg as big as Jaskier's head, swaddled carefully in soft cloth. He brings it across the clearing to the bird-thing, who trills with a sort of restrained desperation as he approaches. It lets go of Jaskier so that it can receive its egg, and Jaskier drops to the ground and scrambles across the campsite clearing, putting as much distance between him and it as he can.

Geralt also makes the bird-thing promise to stop attacking the local townspeople. "If I tell them that you've cleared off, they shouldn't post any more contracts for your eggs," he explains, and the bird-thing nods its understanding. It thanks Geralt and then, egg clutched carefully in its talons, it flies off.

With it gone, Geralt turns his attention to Jaskier. He feels a little woozy, if he's honest. The bird-thing had swooped down onto the campsite and snatched him up like some kind of tiny rabbit. It had flown around the clearing, knocking various parts of Jaskier against several different tree branches, before settling in to wait for Geralt to return.

"Stay still," Geralt says.

Jaskier does not think that will be a problem. He stays still while Geralt checks him over for wounds, finds the gash near his hairline and puncture wounds on his torso. Geralt uses herbs from his satchel on the wounds, then stops the bleeding as best he can with the cloth he'd unwrapped from around the egg.

"Let's get you back to town, find you a real healer," Geralt says, his concern obvious in his face and his voice.

"Why did the bird-thing think I was your dear one?" Jaskier asks, a little muzzily, as Geralt helps him up.

Geralt doesn't answer.

  
  


vi.

Jaskier tracks Geralt to the tavern, and finds him in a drunken heap outside. It looks like people have mostly been stepping over him, but there's at least one muddy footprint on his chest.

Jaskier's surprised he's not surrounded by a pile of corpses, to be honest.

"C'mon, friend, let's get you back to your rooms." Jaskier leans down and tries to help him to his feet. Geralt is...not cooperating. He feels like dead weight. "Sweet Melitele, you smell like a distillery."

"Well, _you_ smell like--" Geralt hesitates, obviously searching for the right insult, before settling on, "--your mother."

"My mother was a lovely woman; I will take that as a compliment." Jaskier sniffs, although between the alcohol and the mud, he immediately regrets it. He stoops again and manages to get a shoulder under Geralt's arm and haul him to his feet. He grunts with the exertion.

Behind Jaskier, a deep, angry voice shouts, "Oi, there he is!"

Jaskier tenses. That's never good.

"The witcher!" the voice continues. Jaskier relaxes automatically--they're not looking for him!--and then remembers who he's currently holding.

"Can we help you gentlemen?" he asks, maneuvering himself and Geralt both to face the speaker. Geralt, of course, does not make it easy.

The speaker is a big man, nearly twice as wide as Jaskier is, with biceps like tree trunks. He doesn't look very bright, but then again, he doesn't look like he needs to be. He's surrounded by a group of similar men, the obvious ringleader. And he's pissed off.

"What did you _do_?" Jaskier whispers to Geralt.

Geralt shrugs broadly, the movement almost causing him to fall. "Not my fault he's bad at arm-wrestling."

"I have a bone to pick with the witcher," the big man says, sticking his chin out like a dare.

"I'm sure you do," Jaskier says, in the most soothing tone he can manage. "I'm sure that whatever he did, he's very sorry that he did it."

"'M not," Geralt whispers loudly.

Jaskier tries to shush him. He's just noticed the very large clubs the men are carrying. "Gentlemen," he says, trying to keep his voice steady, "what can we do to make this right?"

Turns out it really is a disagreement about arm-wrestling. The big man wants Geralt to apologize and admit that he, not Geralt, is the town's arm-wrestling champion.

"You know what's better than one man saying that you're the champion?" Jaskier says, when it becomes apparent that Geralt is going to continue to refuse to apologize. "The _whole town_ saying that you're the champion."

The big man tells them his name, Bart, and Jaskier improvises a jaunty, not-at-all panicked tune about how Bart is the arm-wrestling champion, of this town and maybe the whole world. The meter's not quite right, but Bart and his group of goons leave singing it anyway.

A success, if Jaskier does say so himself. He hates to think what might have happened to Geralt if Bart had found him before Jaskier had.

Crisis averted, he and Geralt stagger together back to the inn across the square and up the stairs to the room that Geralt is renting. Geralt is also humming the song, which feels like even more of a success.

When they make it inside, Jaskier deposits Geralt onto the bed, as gently as he can. While Geralt continues to hum, Jaskier manages to pull off his boots and strip him out of his boot-printed shirt. The pants are a lost cause; he's not even going to bother trying. Geralt, of course, still does not help. The whole thing is a fucking ordeal.

"You, my dear witcher, are nearly more trouble than you're worth," Jaskier says, mostly to himself, as he tucks Geralt into the bed.

" _Nearly_ ," Geralt says, smirking up at him.

Jaskier allows himself to smile. "Nearly."

He stands there for probably too long, looking at the big bed, looking at his own bedroll on the floor, looking at Geralt.

"Get in the bed, Jaskier," Geralt says with a sigh. It's kind of a mixed message, given how annoyed he sounds.

"I'm fine on the floor, really--"

"Just get in the damn bed."

Well, far be it from Jaskier to refuse a kind gesture from a friend. He strips down to his smallclothes, blows out the candles, and slips into the bed. Geralt has rolled over to the far side of the bed, making room for him. From the way his breathing has slowed, Jaskier is almost certain that he's fast asleep. He lies there for a short eternity, listening to Geralt peacefully breathe, before he says _fuck it_ to himself, carefully rolls over, and presses the lightest possible kiss to Geralt's forehead.

He's wanted to for a very long time.

Without moving, Geralt says into the darkness, "Did you just kiss me?"

Jaskier scrambles back onto his own side of the bed. "No? No. If you're angry about it, definitely no."

Geralt...laughs. Geralt laughs, and Geralt reaches over to grab him, pull him close, and kiss him on the mouth. It takes Jaskier by surprise, and it's a moment before he realizes that this is actually happening and kisses Geralt back.

Geralt finally pulls away, breathing hard. When Jaskier doesn't immediately have a clever quip--which, of course he doesn't, Geralt just fucking _kissed_ him--Geralt chuckles. "Finally got you speechless?"

Jaskier shakes his head. "Yes, congratulations, I think you finally do."

"You're an idiot," Geralt says affectionately.

"Yes, but I'm _your_ idiot," Jaskier says. It's probably a compliment. Jaskier definitely means for it to be a compliment.

"That you are," Geralt says, and Jaskier can hear him smiling.

Jaskier kisses him again.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Some Bards Have All The Luck](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24303478) by [Ceewelsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceewelsh/pseuds/Ceewelsh), [gingermaggiereads (gingermaggie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingermaggie/pseuds/gingermaggiereads), [Gondolinpod (Gondolin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gondolin/pseuds/Gondolinpod), [Jet_pods (Jetainia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jetainia/pseuds/Jet_pods), [oakleaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oakleaf/pseuds/oakleaf), [sunlightsymphony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlightsymphony/pseuds/sunlightsymphony), [TheLordOfLaMancha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLordOfLaMancha/pseuds/TheLordOfLaMancha)
  * [[Podfic] Some Bards Have All The Luck](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429175) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods), [Dr_Fumbles_McStupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid/pseuds/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid), [Flowerparrish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish), [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer), [semperfiona_podfic (semperfiona)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/pseuds/semperfiona_podfic), [tinypinkmouse_podfics (tinypinkmouse)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinypinkmouse/pseuds/tinypinkmouse_podfics)




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